The Communist Party of the Philippines warns against escalation of US military intervention

CPP warns against escalation of US military intervention
September 30, 2009

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today warned the United States government against using the killing of two US soldiers in Sulu yesterday to justify an escalation of its military intervention in the country and demanded an immediate pullout of all US troops from Philippine territory, an end to the local operations of the US Pacific Command’s 600-strong Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTFP-P), and the termination of the one-sided Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

“The killing yesterday of two US soldiers in Sulu underscores the need to put an immediate end to the deployment of US soldiers in the Philippines, especially where there is a raging armed conflict between the Philippine government and anti-government armed groups. This is not the first nor the last case where US soldiers’ intrusion into combat zones and actual participation in combat operations in Philippine territory have been exposed,” said the CPP.

Yesterday morning, two US soldiers identified as S/Sgt. Jack Martin and SFC Christopher Shaw were killed when their vehicle was bombed while crossing a combat area in Indanan, Sulu. Also killed was a Filipino marine who was part of the joint team of US and Philippine military forces. Several others were wounded.

“We urge the Filipino and American people to demand that the Obama government immediately pull out all its interventionist troops in the country and thus prevent the escalation of combat operations involving American troops from turning the Philippines into another Iraq and Afghanistan,” said the CPP. “The American people would not want to be drawn into another Vietnam-like quagmire.”

“The repeal of the VFA and all other unequal military treaties between the US and Philippine governments has now even more become an urgent clamor of the Filipino people,” said the CPP.

“With hundreds of US troops carrying out various combat, combat-related as well as covert operations in the Philippines, it is inevitable that more and more US soldiers and operatives will be targeted by various armed groups that view them as interventionist forces aligned with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP),” added the CPP.

“The Filipino people do not accept the US and Philippine governments’ spin that the US soldiers killed in Indanan were non-combatants and involved only in development projects,” the CPP said.

“As always, those US interventionist troops were armed to the teeth, self-confident in their military prowess and actually combat-ready, but they failed to anticipate the blast that hit them as they entered hostile territory. Their so-called humanitarian and development projects serve only as entry points for their presence and participation in combat and combat-related operations.”